20 years of studies on the balanced scorecard: Trends,accomplishments, gaps and opportunities for future research

Robert Kaplan and David Norton introduced the Balanced Scorecard in their 1992 Harvard Business Review article. 2012 marks 20 years since that article. This anniversary has motivated me to review the state of research on the balanced scorecard, to highlight gaps in that research and to outline some ideas for further research. To this end, I reviewed 114 articles published in 25 accounting journals and 67 articles in business and management journals in the period 1992–2011. The findings of this literature review are presented in three parts. First, the reviewed articles are categorised by topics, research settings, theories, research method, and primary data analysis techniques. Second, the contributions of research to the field and the lessons learned from these studies are discussed. Third, knowledge gaps in existing balanced scorecard research are identified, leading to consideration of several ideas for future research. The last section offers my final remarks.     

CAFR 1999–2021, the past two decades and a look ahead

The China Accounting and Finance Review (CAFR) was jointly established in 1999 by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Tsinghua University. Over the past 22 years, CAFR has published original papers in accounting and finance with a focus on China-related research. In this article, we review the journal’s publishing patterns and the impactful articles it has published, with the aim of better understanding past research on China-related issues and recent publication patterns and trends as well as developing new insight that may inspire future submissions. We divide past CAFR articles by topic into six groups: (i) information disclosure; (ii) auditing; (iii) corporate governance; (iv) market efficiency; (v) corporate finance; and (vi) miscellaneous. We use these categories as the basis of our review for articles published before 2020. We also summarize articles by their regional setting, research methodology, and authors’ university affiliation. We then highlight the contributions of a few impactful CAFR articles that are actively cited in both the Chinese and English literature. We complement the literature review by going over China’s financial stability research in JFS. We also compare CAFR with other major accounting and finance journals in the Asia-Pacific region. CAFR stands out by welcoming research using a diversity of regional settings and research topics. Finally, we discuss the new editorial strategies that began in 2020. Under the new editorial policy, CAFR now publishes more non-China and more cross-disciplinary studies than it used to. We review several recent publications to demonstrate the change. Going forward, we intend to call for the publication of more high-quality papers in accounting and finance that are not restricted to a region, area, or methodology providing new insights into accounting and finance.     

Judgment and Decision‐Making Research in Auditing and Accounting: Future Research Implications of Person,Task, and Environment Perspective

The discipline of accounting and auditing has increasingly recognized judgment and decision making (JDM) as highly important attributes in the profession because individuals such as managers, auditors, financial analysts, accountants, and standard setters make pivotal judgments and decisions. Many studies undertaken in this domain of research also substantiate the significance of JDM in accounting and auditing. This study evaluates all the papers published in 10 accounting journals among the leading ones from 1980 to 2010 that fall within the domain of JDM research. The categorization of the studies reviewed in this paper is based on Bonner's ( 1999 ) three major determinants of JDM: Person, Task, and Environment variables. The review highlights the progress in the literature over the past three decades and also identifies the methodological limitations of previous research. The identified limitations will be useful for improving the research method of future JDM studies in accounting and auditing. The review also draws inferences on how JDM research in auditing, which is well established, could usefully guide future JDM research in financial accounting.     

MICRO CREDIT RISK METRICS: A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW

Default modelling is a general term used for several interrelated fields of risk management. Bond defaults, credit (loan) defaults, firm defaults and country defaults are examples of this kind. The scope and reason for existence of this study is to focus mainly on firm default. The purpose of this review is to shed light on the development and evaluation of the models proposed for predicting bankruptcy in terms of conceptualization, country distribution, sector specification, time dimension, variables used and findings reported. The current review includes firm default studies published in business fields such as accounting, economics, finance and management science. This review is distinct in that it seeks (i) to give a comprehensive examination of the models, (ii) to compare and contrast the features of the models and (iii) to show with a solid argument where future research should be focused. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sixty years of Accounting & Finance: a bibliometric analysis of major research themes and contributions

This article offers a systematic review of the major contributions in the journal Accounting & Finance over the past 60 years. We apply several different bibliographic tools to model highly cited articles and major strands of research that have significantly advanced research in accounting and finance across the Asia-Pacific region. An analysis of bursting (or ‘hot’) topics shows major research trends over time, including recent ‘hot’ topics such as China-related research, corporate social responsibility and sustainable finance. The article concludes by highlighting new research directions - Accounting & Finance has opened towards more interdisciplinary research and greater diversity in methods.     

Corporate credit risk modeling and the macroeconomy

Despite a surge in the research efforts put into modeling credit and default risk during the past decade, few studies have incorporated the impact that macroeconomic conditions have on business defaults. In this paper, we estimate a duration model to explain the survival time to default for borrowers in the business loan portfolio of a major Swedish bank over the period 1994–2000. The model takes both firm-specific characteristics, such as accounting ratios and payment behaviour, loan-related information, and the prevailing macroeconomic conditions into account. The output gap, the yield curve and consumers’ expectations of future economic development have significant explanatory power for the default risk of firms. We also compare our model with a frequently used model of firm default risk that conditions only on firm-specific information. The comparison shows that while the latter model can make a reasonably accurate ranking of firms’ according to default risk, our model, by taking macro conditions into account, is also able to account for the absolute level of risk.     

Determinants and consequences of debt maturity structure: A systematic review of the international literature

We conduct a systematic review of the international research on the determinants and consequences of debt maturity structure in the accounting, finance, and corporate governance literature. Our review reveals that a large volume of empirical research has been conducted on the determinants of debt maturity structure, and we categorize these determinants into the following five factors: (1) firm specific; (2) tax; (3) corporate governance; (4) country-level institutional; and (5) macroeconomic. The literature on the consequences of debt maturity structure is relatively scant and generally focuses on the effect of debt maturity structure on financial reporting quality and investment and financing decisions. We consider endogeneity as one of the major concerns in the reported empirical studies that, unless addressed satisfactorily, may render some of the findings untenable. Based on the review, we also provide several future research directions.     

Structuration theory in accounting research: Applications and applicability

Ever since Giddens’ structuration theory (ST) was introduced into the accounting literature some 25 years ago, it has strengthened its position as one of the major schools of thought used to explore accounting as organizational, social and political phenomena. The purpose of this study is to review how ST has been applied, and can be applied, in this sizeable literature. Overall, the review of some 65 published papers, suggests that not only has ST contributed to challenge the assumptions of ‘inherent and functional’ features of accounting systems per se characterizing mainstream research, but also to develop other alternative theoretical perspectives. However, our review also suggests several limitations. These include that the accounting community has not really worked as a collective to develop a structurationist understanding of accounting practices, and that most researchers remain largely uncritical to ST as a theory. We also find that accounting scholars have not yet developed a mutual understanding of how to interpret ST (i.e. there are conceptual unclarities and even inconsistencies), or how to apply ST methodologically in empirical research. Based on these limitations, and the identification of a number of ‘black spots’ in the literature, we suggest several directions for future scholarly effort.     

The Communication Skills of Accountants: What we Know and the Gaps in our Knowledge

Abstract

This paper critically reviews 19 studies published between 1972 and 2012 that investigated the written and/or oral communication skills of practicing accountants. The core aim of the review was to identify skills considered important and highlight gaps regarding what is known about existing and desired communication skills in the accounting profession. Key findings include that most studies did not detail the basis used to select the skills examined, used very broad skill-set categories and/or did not sufficiently incorporate information already established in the literature. Differing views on the importance of communication skills were found between educators and accountants. Knowledge gaps identified relate to the communication skills considered most important at varying career stages and different career paths, the specific types of oral and written communication skills needed and the role and importance of oral versus written and informal versus formal communication skills. A fundamental concern is that much of the existing communication skills research is crucially out of date. Of the 19 studies reviewed, only three have been published in the past decade. This suggests that further research is needed in the area.     

CEO characteristics: a review of influential publications and a research agenda

This paper provides a systematic review of literature pertaining to CEO characteristics and firm performance. The CEO of a firm provides critical leadership, social capital, and legitimacy, and as such exerts significant influence on firm performance. By using a bibliographic mapping approach, we identify the fifty‐one most influential publications on CEO characteristics. This field has developed from a few Upper Echelon Theory publications into four distinct categories. We review each of these to identify the main contributions to this research area and to outline research gaps and future research trends.     

A review of Australian management accounting research: 1980–2009

This paper reviews 231 papers published by 10 leading management accounting journals between the years 1980 and 2009. The review is structured according to research topics, research settings, research theories, research method and primary data analysis technique. Based on the results of this review, the paper provides reflections on the evolution of Australian management accounting research over the last 30 years and discusses opportunities for future research.     

An analysis of the research productivity of AIS faculty

During the past 25 years, a number of articles have examined the accounting research productivity of individual faculty members and institutions. Many articles have focused on the quantity of publications, with a few incorporating a quality measurement component. Concurrently, other research efforts have examined the quality of the journals that are considered to be potential outlets for a broad, cross-section of accounting academics. These studies, taken as a whole, have provided valuable insights into the research productivity across the domain of accounting academics. The purpose of this paper is to examine research in the subdiscipline of AIS, from both a quantity and quality perspective and evaluate both institutional productivity and individual faculty productivity. Information from all AIS research published from 1982 through 1998 in 45 accounting and information systems journals was collected and analyzed. Using this data, we show which journals are considered the highest quality outlets for AIS publications, which faculty have published the most AIS research, which employing institutions are rated highest in AIS research productivity and which doctoral granting institutions are rated the highest for AIS research productivity. The findings of this study contribute to the understanding of the AIS research domain and to accounting by providing valuable insights into the quality of AIS research.     

Sources of influence on award winning research: A note

While great advances have been made because of accounting research, limited understanding exists about the process of producing top-research in accounting and getting it published. This study contributes to a better understanding of the process of producing top quality research in accounting by examining the importance and characteristics of a high value-added literature review. To that end, in this study we examine the literature reviews contained in articles recognized for the Notable Contributions to the Accounting Literature Award of the AAA for the twenty-five year period, 1983 to 2007. Results find that top quality research has a cutting edge timeliness that is characterized by greater reliance on more recently published reference sources and by incorporating a substantial number of working papers. This study also identifies the most influential articles, journals and individuals to Notable Contribution authors, including both accounting and interdisciplinary sources.     

Elusive boundaries,power relations,and knowledge production: A systematic review of the literature on digitalization in accounting

A third wave of technological advancements, which is often referred to as “digitalization,” is affecting organizations across the board. This paper aims to present a comprehensive synthesis of the extant scholarly work on digitalization in the accounting literature. It does so through a systematic literature review that focuses on articles on digitalization published by the highest-ranked accounting journals in the period 2007–2017. By conducting a thorough review, we extend Rom and Rohde's (2007) literature review on integrated information systems (IIS) in management accounting. Furthermore, we utilize a modified version of the framework proposed by Rom and Rohde (2007) to classify and interpret the literature. This allows us to understand the differences between IIS and digitalization in accounting, and to illuminate avenues for future research. The paper concludes with an overview of three main differences in how IIS and digitalization have influenced accounting, and three concurrent avenues for future research on digitalization in accounting: the elusive boundaries of accounting, power relations, and knowledge production for decision making.     

Diffusion of integrated reporting,insights and potential avenues for future research

This study reviews the diffusion of integrated reporting (IR) research. The systematic literature review method is used to review the effects of IR at the organisational level, determinants of IR adoption and integrated report quality (IRQ), assurance on IR, economic consequences of IR/IRQ, and research design issues to set agendas for future research. The review covers 119 peer-reviewed IR articles published in 36 journals between 2012 and 2021. It finds that the IR literature is dominated by organisational-level studies, but there is limited research on the economic consequences of IR/IRQ, and the findings are inconclusive to date. Further, the factors that determine IR adoption/IRQ are not conclusive, and there is scarce research on IR assurance. This review contributes to the emerging IR literature and provides valuable insights to the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) in establishing the IR framework as a global reporting norm in practice.     

Product market competition in accounting,finance, and corporate governance: A review of the literature

Product market competition has been identified as one of the most powerful corporate governance tools for motivating managers to maximize firm value. Consistent with this view, a large body of theoretical and empirical research over the years has investigated the implications of product market competition. This paper synthesizes and critically evaluates the empirical literature on the consequences of product market competition in the accounting, finance, and corporate governance domains. Our review focuses on issues like financial reporting quality, analyst forecasting activities, asset pricing, investment, and financing decisions, and the substitutive versus complementary relationships between product market competition and other corporate governance tools. Our review suggests that, although market competition has profound implications for these issues, the empirical findings often provide conflicting results. We highlight such contradictory findings and offer suggestions for future research. Our review will help researchers intending to further investigate the implications of product market competition, both in the US and internationally.     

A Corporate Social Responsibility Framework for Accounting Research

Over the past two decades, there has been growing interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) among accounting scholars. As a testament to this growing interest, two review papers on CSR were published last year in accounting journals. Implicitly guiding hypothesis development in CSR studies is the notion of a conflict between shareholders and stakeholders. We define CSR in terms of a win-win situation for shareholders and stakeholders: a CSR framework for strategic business purposes. We provide evidence supporting this outlook for CSR using cases pertaining to specific companies and findings from archival empirical studies. According to our CSR framework, resources allocated for CSR activity also help propel business strategy; as such, it is difficult to isolate CSR inputs and/or outputs due to problems of non-separability and multidimensionality. While measurement is a challenge, our framework nonetheless opens up various promising avenues for future research.